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Jonathan Weiland is the currently the director (or Program delivery partner PDP) of the FIRST Tech Challenge in Illinois . He has been involved in FIRST Tech Challenge for 12 years. He has served as a mentor for many FTC teams over the years and has been the director of the FIRST Tech Challenge in Illinois for the last 10 years. His teams have won the 8 Illinois State FTC championships. In 2018 his team Vertigo won the Illinois Inspire award and the Motivate award at the World Championships.
Mihir is a high school freshman who is proud to be a software developer in the Virtual Robot Simulator Project. With over 4 years of experience in programming languages including C#, Dart, Java, JavaScript, Swift, and Python, he has created and published many mobile applications on both Android and iOS – many of which are being used by thousands worldwide! By developing both the VRC Android Apps and working on the simulation, he has further developed his skills in Android development and learned how to power the simulator using the Unity Engine..
Leonidas is a high school junior involved in many activities outside school, including the Virtual Robot Simulator Project, where he creates the robot Unity simulation using C#. He has been part of his high school FRC robotics team for three years and is currently VP of Scouting of Cryptonite Team 624. During his time on the team he introduced ROS, a robot programming operating system, which he then used with Unity to build a simulator. After much modification this team project then turned into the Virtual FTC Simulator used today! When he isn’t developing the Unity robot simulator he is programming robots using ROS, participating in the NASA scholars program, and engaging in a wide variety of other hobbies, such as playing guitar.
Product Advisor
Technical Advisor
Frontend Web Developer
Brad has been involved with FIRST for the past 5 years, volunteering and providing support for FTC programs in Illinois. He has over 20 years of consulting experience leading programs and projects for FORTUNE 1000 companies and recently was managing a project management practice area in Chicago. FTC has helped to provide a way for him to contribute to the next generation of students working to excel in engineering and robotics, including providing insight for students on how to successfully work with others as part of a project team
Sundeep has been involved with FIRST for the past 6 years and is the head coach of Innov8rz, a NorCal FTC team. He has an Electrical Engineering background with experience ranging from nano-scale transducers to high-speed electronics. Having architected large scale systems, he has authored over 12 patents and numerous trade secrets. FTC has given him a platform for mentoring and bringing the best of out the next generation and is here to bring in all the help needed to make this project successful.
Siddarth is a high school senior who does frontend web development for VRS. He started an FTC team with his dad in 2020, recruiting his friends and learning about FTC robotics with them. He is now the lead software developer and captain of FTC Team 18568, 6:1. He has two years of experience with frontend web development, and has experience with many other types of software development. He is also proficient with Blender. He joined VRS in October 2021, when they were recruiting FTC members to overhaul the old website. Since then, he has also done one-off projects for VRS, such as robot decimation and scouting projects.
Parth is a high school freshman from Orlando, Florida. He has been in FTC for two years, and is a programmer on FTC Team 7477 Super 7. He has experience in multiple programming languages. He joined the VRS team in April 2022. He has helped with testing and writing different samples for the VRS, and web development. He hopes to do good and make it worlds this upcoming season with his FTC team.
Kartik is a senior high school student part of FRC Team 624 CRyptonite. He has been on the FRC team for four years and is currently the VP of Marketing. Utilizing Robot Operating System he created a complex vision tracking system to efficiently track the goal. He also designs game objects and scripts with C# in Unity to simulate real life scenarios. He also completed the NASA Aerospace Scholars Program along with the Moonshot experience. Other hobbies that interest Kartik are teaching programming languages, artificial intelligence and cricket.
Gavin is a sophomore at the University of Texas at Austin majoring in Mechanical Engineering and minoring in Computer Science. In his free time, he enjoys doing game development and video production always looking to enhance his abilities in some way or another. Gavin has participated in FLL and FTC for 2 years each winning the District Control Award 2 years in a row. He has also founded a club while in high school called Mentor Club that has high school students mentoring young kids about their interests and talents. Gavin while in this club taught programming, robotics, and other STEM related subjects. Outside of the work of it all, Gavin enjoys listening to music, petting his cat, and watching YouTube videos.
VIRTUAL ROBOT SIMULATOR IS A SIMPLE, EASY-TO-USE PLATFORM THAT ALLOWS FTC TEAMS TO PROGRAM AND TEST THEIR ROBOTS WITHOUT ACCESS TO PHYSICAL HARDWARE.